Bone Lord 5

by Dante King

  “As soon as the underwater sleds are ready, we’ll set sail.”

  I shot my spirit into the kraken, which was lurking in the depths of the harbor. I experienced the gentle tug of the undersea currents as if they were caressing my own flesh, and sensed the presence of all sorts of aquatic lifeforms, near and far. With my enormous kraken eyes, sensitive to even the weakest light, I could see with exceptional clarity through the murky gloom of the harbor water. The seabed was littered with hundreds of wrecks, some of them old and encrusted with barnacles, but most new, charred and black from the saboteurs’ fires that had sunk them. I glided through the water to the nearest wreck and tore it apart as easily as if it had been made of wet parchment. I ripped out the anchor chain and pulled out the cargo, searching for anything made of metal that could be turned into an underwater sled. There was a large amount of copper jewelry, which would be perfect for my needs. Now that the kraken knew what to do, I pulled my spirit out of it and let it get on with the task on its own. I took Percy and his crew around to all the local blacksmiths, who I paid handsomely to work the metal and chains that would be salvaged. They were all confident that the work would be complete in around two days.

  Now that that was taken care of, I went off to seek out the rest of my party. Rami-Xayon and Yumo-Rezu were overjoyed; Tong-Tong’s tavern hadn’t been damaged in the fires, and she was okay, if a little shaken up. Everyone else was also there, drinking ale. While enjoying a drink, I told them about my plan to get my army across the ocean, and everyone approved. I was in the mood to keep drinking, as were the rest of my party, except Ji-Ko and his monks, who excused themselves after just one drink. I also noticed that Layna seemed to be a little restless. I sensed that she wanted to get out of the tavern, and I figured I may as well get some fresh air and find out what was bothering her.

  She and I left the others to their ale and headed out into the streets of Gongxiong.

  “You seem to be a little on edge,” I said.

  “It’s the scent,” she replied, smiling eerily. “Can’t you smell it?”

  “All I smell is ash and smoke, and the salty whiff of the ocean.”

  “My Arachne sense of smell is finetuned to pick up other things, Vance. If you could smell the air the way I’m able to, you’d notice a delectable scent wafting around. It’s like well-done bacon, but sweeter…”

  I realized that what she was describing was the smell of the burnt corpses of the people who had died in the fires.

  “I can sense a great amount of death here, and many people died in the fires,” I said.

  “I know it would be wrong for me to devour their charred flesh,” Layna said, sighing wistfully. “But I cannot deny the intensity of hunger that this scent has awoken in me.” Then her eyes roved slowly over my body, and fiery desire crackled in them like freshly stoked coals. “Of course, there are other ways to satiate the hunger that is gnawing so relentlessly at my insides…”

  I knew exactly what she wanted, and I was happy to provide it. I’d been without it for a while too, and a great hunger was churning in my guts too, although it didn’t have anything to do with the presence of charred corpses around us.

  “I’m sure the inn we stayed at when we first arrived has plenty of rooms,” I said.

  “I’m sure it does,” Layna said, licking her lips slowly in anticipation. “Let’s go.”

  We got ourselves a room at the inn, and the moment I closed the door behind us Layna was all over me. She and I had both been waiting for this moment since we’d first met. Our lips locked, and our tongues danced with the pressure-cooked intensity of pent-up desire. She gripped my head and caressed my face with her human hands while we kissed, while her spider arms gripped my back and pulled my body closer to hers in a passionate embrace.

  After a few fiery moments we broke off our ravenous kiss, both panting, and the magma of a ferocious desire gushed through our veins. I tore my assassin’s gear off with eager haste, and Layna pulled a cord on her shimmering crimson dress. The dress slipped off her body and fell to the floor, and she stood naked before me. The sight of her nude form got hot blood gushing into my prick, which got hard in seconds with a frenetic throbbing.

  Her angular facial features looked even more strikingly beautiful than ever in the candlelight of the room, with her long dark hair tumbling around her shoulders like black rain. It wasn’t her gorgeous face I was staring at most, though. Her breasts were nigh on perfect; large and high, round and pert, with pale pink upward-facing nipples that were stiff with arousal. Below them was a smooth belly, and her broad hips gave way to a large, impossibly firm round ass at the rear and long, shapely legs below. At the meeting of her thighs was a tiny triangle of neatly trimmed hair, pointing me toward her heavenly cleft.

  “I’ve never mated with a human,” Layna said, licking her lips as she took in the sight of my huge, stiff prick. “Much less a god. But now that I’m able to see what I’ve been missing out on, I can’t believe I’ve waited so long…”

  She dropped to her knees and her tits gave a pleasing bounce, and she wrapped both hands around my shaft, staring with greedy hunger at my cock. Her spider arms caressed my back and my ass, and when she parted her lips her sharp teeth glinted in the light. For a second I thought about the fact that she regularly dined on human flesh, and a flutter of nervousness rushed through me.

  “Don’t worry, I won’t bite,” she purred, staring up at me as she began to stroke my cock. “Too hard, that is…”

  She swallowed the head of my prick and started sucking softly on it, moaning with pleasure. While she was blowing me and jerking my shaft, she reached around with her spider arms and started caressing my balls. I grinned as waves of bliss raced through me; it was like I was being serviced by two women instead of just one. Then with one of her spider arms she reached down to her dripping wet slit and started to rub her clit, while she used another of her spider arms to slowly finger-fuck herself.

  “Damn, you know how to put on a show,” I gasped, gripping two fistfuls of her silky hair in her hands and pulling her head onto my cock with an increased urgency.

  Her moans of pleasure, muted by my prick going halfway down her throat, grew louder and more protracted as she increased the vigor of her self-pleasure, while simultaneously bobbing her head faster on my cock. Suddenly, she shoved my dick as far down her throat as it would go, deep-throating me, and she screamed onto it as an orgasm tore through her, brought on by her deft spider arms and the sweet taste of my prick.

  After a few intense seconds of writhing and choking on my cock she popped it out of her mouth and stared up at me, raw desire splayed across her beautiful face.

  “Fuck me, Vance,” she begged. “Fuck me hard, fuck me like the mighty god you are.”

  I didn’t need to be asked twice. Sensing that Layna liked things a little rough, I kept a tight grip on a fistful of her hair and pulled her over to the bed. I threw her down onto it and she gasped with pleasure before she got down onto her hands and knees. She peered over her shoulder and smiled back at me, her fangs on show as she raised her ass in the air and splayed her legs apart. My body roared at the delectable view of her soaking-wet sex. As I guided myself into her, she let out a long moan and gripped the sheets tight with not only her human hands, but all her spider limbs too. I drove myself into her slowly, savoring her tightness, and once I’d filled her up completely, she sucked in a sharp breath and gripped the sheets even tighter.

  “I’ve never felt this full,” she gasped. “Don’t stop.”

  I complied, driving myself forcefully in and out of her, every thrust a powerful stroke that bottomed her out. I slapped her ass with sharp, hard blows as I fucked her, and every sharp slap made her gasp and squeal with pleasure. She writhed like an eel, grinding her hips against me as I took her sex with an almost frantic fury. Soon, a screaming orgasm tore through her, far more powerful than the one she’d given herself earlier.

  I didn’t let up, though, keeping the pace and
intensity of my thrusting up, causing her to laugh with ecstasy and shiver madly with pleasure. With two of her spider arms, she reached around to my ass, pulling me in and encouraging me to fuck her even harder. Another potent orgasm ripped through her after another minute or two, and by then I was ready to blow too.

  “I know you’re hungry for human meat,” I gasped, pulling out of her and rolling her over onto her back. “But I’ve got something just as good you can swallow.”

  With intense bliss coursing through me, I blew my load all over her face and chest, blasting creamy ropes across her tits and lips. She giggled with glee as I sprayed my hot issue all over her, and she playfully licked it all up once I was done, making sure to not leave a drop behind.

  “That was even better than I imagined it would be.” She pulled me in for a sweaty embrace with both her human hands and her spider arms.

  “I’ve been waiting a long time for that, and it was every bit as awesome as I expected,” I said with a grin.

  “So good that we should do it again as soon as possible, shouldn’t we?” she asked.

  My cock had barely deflated, but it was already starting to stiffen again.

  “Is right now soon enough?” I asked.

  She pulled me in closer and planted her lips on mine, kissing me with a fervent hunger.

  “That’s perfect,” she whispered. “Just perfect.”

  Chapter Seven

  The underwater sleds, linked by anchor chains, were completed within two days. The blacksmiths and the pirates worked around the clock to achieve this remarkable feat. One of the older blacksmiths, who knew the geography of the coast well, suggested that the best place to get my army onto the sleds and into the water would be a large stretch of sandy beach about forty miles south of Gongxiong.

  When my army arrived on the outskirts of Gongxiong, we said farewell to Tong-Tong and the blacksmiths and marched south to the beach. Percy and the pirates sailed my single remaining war ship out of the harbor and up the coast to meet us there. The vessel had been loaded up with the dragon skeleton, supplies and gold, and as many various undead creatures as we could fit in the hold. I directed my undead sea creatures to the beach as well. My party was complete once more, with Rollar and Drok joining us after having marched with the army.

  The beach was quite spectacular; it was a strip of white, powdery sand that stretched in a gentle arc for miles. A thick mass of palm trees fringed the sand, and the broad expanse of turquoise water was crystal clear, quite flat, and with barely any waves. I could see why the old blacksmith had recommended I come here to get my army into the sea.

  The warm sun on my face, the rich blue sky above clear of clouds, and the gentle sea breeze whispering through the swaying palms, I found myself somewhat contemplative. I thought that this would be a great place to come back to one day when the world wasn’t caught up in so much chaos. My mouth curved into a smile as I pictured my women frolicking naked in the water and waiting on me, bringing me drinks while I lay on the white sand and relaxed. Not today, but one day.

  Such images were pushed out of my mind by the magnificent sight of my army marching across the beach. With numbers bolstered by zombie troops raised from the Warlock’s army, the size of my undead army was now close to forty thousand troops. The biggest and strongest troops, the undead Jotunn, led the army, dragging the stacked-up sleds behind them. Behind them marched all of my cavalry units, then came the bulk of the army: the infantry units. They marched in perfect order, their movements synchronized with far more precision than that of any living troops.

  However, they would now perform a maneuver requiring more complex mass synchronization than anything I’d ever had to do before. If ever the individual troops of my army needed to work together like the cogs and wheels of some enormous, impossibly complex machine, it was now. Every single troop—those with hands, anyway—carried a spear, which would be used as an improvised bargepole. If these bargepoles weren’t driven into the seabed in perfect unison, with an absolutely precise rhythm, this whole mass movement operation would fall apart, and the army would be left floundering at the bottom of the ocean, barely able to move.

  To get this right, I would have to consciously control almost every single undead minion in my army simultaneously. This was something I’d never done before.

  Rollar, surveying the marching army with an admiring gaze, walked over to me.

  “Are you sure this is going to work, Lord Vance?” he asked.

  “It’s going to work, Rollar, trust me. It’ll take a bit of effort, but I’ll get them all moving as one. They’ll glide across the seabed as smoothly as my ship will sail above the waves.”

  At the shoreline, where the waves lapped gently at the powdery sand, the undead Jotunn unpacked and linked up all the chains and sleds. Each giant then took one of the many main chains and walked into the water, until they were deep enough for one of the kraken’s arms to grip. When the kraken’s arms were all full, the undead whale gripped the remaining few chains in its mouth. Once the kraken and the whale were holding all of these chains, the Jotunn took their places on the first of the metal sleds. I’d directed Each Frost Giant to chop down a pine tree and turn it into a huge bargepole; the Jotunn, the kraken and the whale would be the main force pulling the sleds. After this, I ordered the rest of the army to position themselves on the sleds, which stretched across the entire length of the beach.

  “Watch this, Rollar,” I said with a grin. Then I closed my eyes and drew in a deep breath, shutting out everything around me, all sounds and sensations and directions. Before trying to perfectly synchronize the movements of every single member of my army, I needed to visit the Gray Sentinel to fill myself with power.

  In the blink of an eye, I was on the Black Plane, and the towering Gray Sentinel loomed on the horizon.

  In one powerful leap, I cleared the mile that separated me from the tree. When I looked up, I saw a new skill glowing brightly at the very top of the tree. It was the final skill I’d attain, but now wasn’t the time to pluck that tempting fruit from the bough. As frustrating as it was, I would have to delay this particular gratification.

  For the first time since the beginning of my visits to the Gray Sentinel, I didn’t climb the tree to get myself a new ability. Instead, I drew Grave Oath and stepped up to its trunk. After the battle with the Warlock and the fight with Hengchun’s troops, it was crammed full of souls. I slammed the weapon into the trunk, and like a steel rod on a cathedral spire conducting a lightning strike, I felt the energy of the souls coursing through Grave Oath into me. The energy filled me with power. I felt like a dry rag dropped into a puddle, soaking up water. I kept pulling soul energy from the Gray Sentinel until I couldn’t hold any more.

  At the top of the tree, the glow of the new skill began to grow dimmer, and it seemed to shrivel up. Now it wouldn’t be ready for me to pluck until I’d refilled the tree with souls, but I wasn’t worried about that; plenty more lives would be taken in the name of the Temple of Necrosis in the days and weeks to come. Overflowing with power and feeling almost omnipotent, I jumped back into the physical present.

  “Lord Vance, you’ve … grown stronger, immensely so,” Rollar said to me when I opened my eyes. He was looking at me with an eerie mix of fear and awe on his face. “Now that I’m a Death Knight, I can sense your power, and it’s almost terrifying in its intensity.”

  “I need it for what I’m about to do, Rollar. Keep the others away from me for the next few minutes; I need to be able to concentrate deeply.”

  “Aye, I’ll do that, Lord Vance. You won’t hear a peep out of me, or them.”

  Once again, I closed my eyes and spread my arms out to my sides, the palms of my hands facing the sky. I filled my lungs with air, then looked at my army before me. I wasn’t looking at them with my human eyes, though; they were still closed. Rather, I was seeing them with my spirit eyes. Instead of seeing a mass of skeletons and rotting corpses covering the beach, I saw glowing beings, each a t
hree-dimensional construct made of yellow-green light. I looked down at my body and saw that I too was composed of that same light, but my body was glowing far more brightly than that of my minions. Indeed, I shone with such intensity that my light was near blinding.

  I blasted out two ropes of black tendrils from my hands, and they snaked through the air at speed, unravelling into tens of thousands of individual fibers. Each fiber had a tiny black harpoon at its tip, and each of these harpoons slammed into the backs of the skulls of my minions. With each impact, a jolt buzzed in me. In the space of seconds, thousands of these jolts were jarring through my body. The fibers tore through the air, each writhing furiously until it slammed into its target. They kept snaking across the beach until every one had plunged into the head of a minion. Finally, every minion in my army was connected to me via the black ropes coming from my palms.

  Energy coursed through the fibers. Pulses of it raced out of my body and zapped the undead, causing their bodies to jerk and shudder, as if on the cusp of breaking into a mass seizure. As this was happening, the power drained slowly from my body, and my formerly blinding glow began to ebb, becoming dimmer and dimmer. Finally, when I had spent all the soul energy I’d drawn from the Gray Sentinel, my glow was the same as that of all my troops.

  I was now connected to each of them in a way I never before had been. They were me, and I was them. I was no longer a puppeteer controlling puppets. Instead, I was the army.

  To test this new sense of synchronized unison out, I pointed straight ahead of me with my right arm. There was no delay, not even for a fraction of a second. The moment I did this, so did every single one of the undead. I held up one finger and curled the others in. My minions did exactly the same thing in unison, the very moment I did it. I hopped on my left leg, and so did each of them.

  “Excellent,” I whispered. They all moaned out a soft, wordless groan with me.